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Originally Posted by Silent Hunter UK
Since we're focussing on the 1980s, I would suggest the James Bond films For Your Eyes Only, Octopussy and The Living Daylights for some of the depictions of the 'Russians' in the Cold War.
It's also important to not ignore Libya in all of this, with Gaddafi very much a villainous figure in Western popular culture - he armed the IRA and other terrorist groups. See Airwolf and the "Bilya"-set Iron Eagle.
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Good call. IIRC, Libyan terrorists are the ones after Doc Brown's plutonium in
Back To The Future (1985).
Yeah, the "Russians" were
the bad guys in many a film during the Cold War (
Red Dawn, Rocky IV, Rambo II & III, are just a few examples). There are also some pretty harrowing films about nuclear war (
The Day After traumatized me as a kid
and I didn't even watch it!). The trouble is, teachers generally don't have time to show full-length feature films in class, and admin tends to frown on the practice. We've been trying to get a
History in Film elective going at my high school for the past 10 years or so but it would have to be an elective course, and we've never had enough kids sign up to make it fly.
Music videos are bite sized, though, so it's not a big time investment for a potentially big impact/connection, and some kids get a kick out of how pop sounds and looks have changed since the 1980s.
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